Pros

Excellent game selection.
Good-looking upconversion for modern TVs.
Save state and rewind features.

Cons

Controller cables are relatively short.

Bottom Line

Nintendo's Super NES Classic Edition is a miniature SNES filled with 21 fantastic games from the 16-bit era, and is a must-have for any fan of classic console gaming.

28 Sep 2017Will Greenwald

The NES Classic Edition impressed us as both as a collectible and as a way to experience gaming history. The miniature Nintendo Entertainment System with matching, full-sized controller, loaded with a selection of 30 NES games from across the system's lifespan, was a fan's dream come true. Now Nintendo is moving on to the next generation of gaming with the Super NES (or SNES) Classic Edition. This little $79.99 system boasts a collection of 21 excellent Super Nintendo games. It costs $20 more than the NES Classic and has nine fewer games, but it offers a far superior gaming experience for any fan of the 8- and 16-bit eras, and earns our Editors' Choice.

Availability

The NES Classic Edition was plagued with availability issues. It sold out immediately, and became nearly impossible to find at retail. Even a year later, your best bet at finding one is paying several times the system's original price tag from a reseller. Nintendo has claimed that the SNES Classic will be more readily available at launch, but we won't be certain until we see (or don't see) it on shelves for ourselves.

Lil' SNES

The SNES Classic is a miniature SNES, just like the NES Classic is a miniature NES. The system measures 1.6 by 4.2 by 5.2 inches (HWD), making it closer in size to a SNES game cartridge than the original SNES itself.

Size nonwithstanding, the resemblance to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System is uncanny. It's shaped identically, with a prominent rectangular protrusion running horizontally across the top and holding the nonfunctional cartridge slot. The Power and Reset controls are rectangular purple buttons on their own vertical ridges, flanking a nonfunctional Eject button that's a darker gray than the rest of the system.

The front appears to hold miniature versions of the SNES gamepad connector, but this is a facade. They're actually molded details on a panel that pulls out to reveal a pair of NES Classic-style (and Wii-style) connectors. A small red power LED to the left of the connectors lights up when the system is on, just like the original SNES. The back of the machine foregoes any nostalgically molded faux connectors and simply holds a micro USB port for power and an HDMI port for connecting the system to your TV (HDMI and USB cables, along with a USB power adapter, are included).

Two SNES-style controllers are included, a notable upgrade from the NES Classic and its single included gamepad. The classic dog bone-style controller looks and feels identical to the original, right down to the convex purple A and B and concave lavender X and Y buttons.

Nintendo tries to solve one of the biggest complaints about the NES Classic with the SNES Classic, but it literally doesn't go far enough. The NES Classic gamepad has an awkwardly short three-foot cable, sparking an entire cottage industry of extender cables and wireless adapters to enable more comfortable gaming. The SNES Classic controllers have slightly longer four-foot cables, but they're still a bit too short if you have a large TV. Fortunately, many third-party NES Classic accessories, like the Nyko Extend Link extension cable, work perfectly well with the SNES Classic and its gamepads.

The Games

While the SNES Classic has only 21 games compared with the NES Classic's 30, they're all bigger, more engaging titles. More importantly, they're all fantastic, without a single dud on the list. That's good, because like the NES Classic, the SNES Classic is a completely closed system; there's no internet connectivity, or any supported way to update the device or add new games.

Out of the 21 games on the SNES Classic, 13 are from Nintendo itself, and while your mileage may vary, I conservatively count at least seven absolute classics among them: Donkey Kong Country, Earthbound, Kirby Super Star, Super Mario World, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, Super Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. While their Nintendo 64 sequels are far superior, the SNES Classic also has F-Zero, Star Fox, and Super Mario Kart.

Unfortunately for sports fans, there's no equivalent to Tecmo Bowl's presence on the NES Classic. The closest thing to a "serious" sports game is Super Punch-Out!!, which is set against the backdrop of professional boxing but is mechanically more of a timing-based puzzle game. Kirby's Dream Course is the most surprising and offbeat choice, and the closest thing to a straight sport title. It's a quirky, fantasy version of miniature golf starring Nintendo's strange pink puff ball, and it's surprisingly engaging.

Third-party publishers are well represented on the SNES Classic, with even more 16-bit gems. From Capcom, there's Mega Man X, Super Ghouls and Ghosts, and Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting. Konami brings Castlevania IV and Contra III: The Alien Wars to the table. And then there's Squaresoft (now Square-Enix).

Squaresoft's inclusion on the SNES Classic hits my own heart, bringing out some of my most beloved memories from the Super Nintendo era. The Squaresoft games on the SNES Classic are Final Fantasy III (6 in Japan and in post-SNES releases), Secret of Mana, and Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. They're all absolutely fantastic, and each can easily take dozens of hours to finish. FF6 is one of the best games in the Final Fantasy series, and Super Mario RPG is the precursor to entire Mario RPG sub-series like Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi. Secret of Mana is also excellent, though I personally would have preferred to see Chrono Trigger instead.

Final Fantasy III/6, Super Mario World, Super Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past have all held places on my personal list of greatest games of all time for over two decades. Earthbound, Mega Man X, Super Mario RPG, and Yoshi's Island are also beloved favorites that, while I don't count in my all-time top 20 list, I've still gladly played repeatedly. Even games that really found their stride on the N64 like Mario Kart and Star Fox are classics in their own right, and deeply enjoyable. Unlike on the NES Classic, there isn't a clunker like Castlevania 2 or a generationally outdated game like Galaga. They're all great, and worth the price of admission alone.

Star Fox 2

The 21st game on the SNES Classic is actually new. Star Fox 2 was an unfinished prototype for a sequel to Star Fox before it was shelved and Star Fox 64 was made for the Nintendo 64. Nintendo took the prototype and finished it, turning it into a complete game exclusively available on the SNES Classic. It feels surprisingly complete, providing both a solid gaming experience and a peak into an alternate history of one of Nintendo's smaller franchises.

Instead of simply making new rail shooter-style levels in the vein of the original Star Fox, Star Fox 2 has you piloting your Arwing starfighter in 360 degrees, similar to Star Fox 64's All-Range Mode. You also manually navigate around the star system to protect the planet Cornellia and intercept threats as they come, like in Star Fox Command for the Nintendo DS. Your Arwing can even transform into a "chicken walker" vehicle to infiltrate bases, just like in Star Fox Zero.

It looks and feels primitive compared with later games in the series, because the SNES' SuperFX chip that enabled the system to process polygonal 3D graphics barely supported mapping textures onto those polygons, and because the SNES gamepad doesn't have an analog stick. Like the original Star Fox, though, Star Fox 2 is a very interesting look at Nintendo's history and how its ideas evolved over time.

Extras and Emulation Tricks

Besides the games themselves, there aren't many extra features on the SNES Classic. You won't find galleries of art or soundtrack players like in Capcom's Mega Man Legacy Collection and The Disney Afternoon Collection. Besides the pictures of the game boxes on the main menu, the only content here is the games themselves. This doesn't mean the SNES Classic is without its tricks, however.

In addition to saving your progress in each game's save file system (which most, but not all, games on the SNES Classic have), you can save emulation states like in the NES Classic. Pressing Reset suspends the game and brings you back to the home screen, where you can save that exact moment in one of four memory slots for each game. You can then jump back into the game at that point whenever you want.

The SNES Classic introduces a new emulation trick on top of the NES Classic-style save states. A Rewind system lets you manually travel back over the last minute of gameplay, undoing any mistakes you made and giving you a chance to try again without restarting the game itself. It's similar to the Rewind feature in The Disney Afternoon Collection, but it's a first for a Nintendo product. Like on the NES Classic, returning to the main menu and activating the emulation features requires physically pressing the Reset button on the system itself; you can't do it from your controller.

The emulation and graphical upscaling is top-notch. The SNES' sub-VGA resolution expands to fit HDTVs and 4K TVs nicely, with crisp pixels and bright colors. There are only three display options to choose from: Pixel Perfect expands each game's native resolution to fill most of the screen vertically, 4:3 expands each game to fill a 4:3 aspect ratio area, and CRT adds a visual filter over the 4:3 game to look like you're playing on a tube television. You can also select from a handful of different borders, like theater curtains or a stereo system flanking the screen.

A Classic Gaming Masterpiece

The Super NES Classic Edition is an incredible retro game system and gaming collectible that strikes the ideal combination of nostalgia and quality. Yes, it will tug at the heartstrings of early Millennials and late Gen-Xers who grew up on the NES and SNES. But there's a reason that console generation is so beloved. It spawned so many excellent games, and 20 of them are on the SNES Classic. They're bigger, deeper, and simply better than their NES counterparts, and can offer hundreds of hours of classic, satisfying gameplay. For $80, that's a steal. Like the NES Classic before it, the SNES Classic earns our Editors' Choice, and stands as a must-have gift for any gamer this holiday season (if you can find it at retail and not scalped for several times above its MSRP).

About the Author

Will Greenwald has been covering consumer technology for a decade, and has served on the editorial staffs of CNET.com, Sound & Vision, and Maximum PC. His work and analysis has been seen in GamePro, Tested.com, Geek.com, and several other publications. He currently covers consumer electronics in the PC Labs as the in-house home entertainment expert, reviewing TVs, media hubs, speakers, headphones, and gaming accessories. Will is also an ISF Level II-certified TV calibrator, which ensures the thoroughness and accuracy of all PCMag TV reviews. See Full Bio